Comments about doctor ‘unfair’

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33753, 28 January 1975, Page 1

Comments about doctor ‘unfair’

(From Our Own Reporter) GREYMOUTH, January 27. Dr J. R. Presland, the medical superintendent-in-chief of the West Coast Hospital Board, has criticised Cr G. Meadows, of the Buller County Council, for attacking the board’s medical services.

Cr Meadows said at a meeting of the council that a person in Westport needing urgent surgery over the Christmas period would probably have died before he could have reached a surgeon.

His wife had cut a tendon in a hand and, in the absence of the resident Buller surgeon, Dr R. Bhattacharya, who was on holiday, she could not be treated at Westport. He also criticised the reception at Grey Hospital when his wife arrived there. Dr Presland said yesterday that most people in New Zealand lived an hour or more away from specialist surgical assistance and provided adequate first aid and resuscitation were available they had nothing to fear. “It is regrettable that Cr Meadows in the same report (“The Press,” January 25) should have published a statement relating to the treatment of his wife at the Grey Hospital as it contains la number of inaccuracies, i “The doctor who dealt

with Mrs Meadows is a registered medical practitioner and consulted with the board’s senior surgical specialist about the patient and carried out his instructions to the letter. SATISFIED

“The senior surgeon concerned has since seen the patient and is satisfied with her progress. He has planned further treatment should this be necessary. “The comment about the doctor reading a book may, for all I know, have got a laugh in the quarter in which it was made, but it is a cheap jibe,” said Dr Presland. “The publication of this information would not matter too much were it not so grossly unfair to the medical officers concerned,” said Dr Presland.

“These people work on the Coast voluntarily and the doctor concerned and his colleagues are not at the moment prepared to undertake more than a minimal comimitment to the West Coast Hospital Board. The effect of :the incident on future recruitment remains to be seen, but lit is bound to be adverse.”